The Men Upstairs (9 page)

Sons of Babel: Because Sometimes Entropy Needs a Little Help.

I understand what it means now.

As they head back to the van, I hurry to my car. I’ve captured everything on my camera, but I know my evidence is useless. No one will ever believe it. They’ll just think it’s some kind of Photoshopped hoax. Still, I intend to keep following them, more from a horrified fascination at this point than anything else. If they started their workday by destroying a park, what’s next on their agenda?

* * *

Visiting a nursing home, as it turns out. Hithergreen Senior Center is a recently built, very modern-looking assisted-living facility. Lots of windows to let sunshine in, lots of trees planted on the grounds. It’s too late in the year for flowers, but I have no doubt that come spring there will be plenty blooming around the place. Probably feeders set up to attract hummingbirds, too.

The Sons of Babel pull into Hithergreen’s lot, park, and get out of the van. They chat as they head inside, and I wonder what they’re talking about. How they’re going to give entropy a little helping hand here? Or maybe how much they’re looking forward to getting their Desiderata back.

I pull into the lot and park only a few spaces away from the van. I’m no longer quite so concerned with keeping the Spindlekin from spotting me, and I wonder if I’m hoping I’ll get caught as a way of forcing a confrontation with them. Maybe.

I head for Hithergreen’s entrance. There’s a fish tank just inside the door, a long one containing several large koi. Shreds of some whitish substance cling to their scales, some sort of skin disease, I figure, and I wonder if the fish had it before the Spindlekin walked past.

Visitors are supposed to sign a logbook at the main reception desk, and a hand-lettered sign encourages us to make liberal use of the hand sanitizer sitting on the counter. I noticed the clear liquid inside the container is shot through with tiny dark threads that expand as I watch. Another adjustment by the Spindlekin. I wonder what the hand sanitizer’s turning into. I decide I really don’t want to know. I sign a false name in the logbook—I use the name of a client I took wedding photos for a couple weeks ago—and for the name of the resident I plan to visit. I use my first grade teacher, an old battle-ax who was around 112 years old when I had her.

The young receptionist at the desk pays no attention to me, and I doubt she’ll check the logbook to verify the info I’ve provided. She’s staring off down the hallway, a troubled look on her face. I don’t need to ask her which way the Spindlekin went. They’ve signed the logbook
Sons of Babel,
and listed the resident they’re visiting as
Everybody.
Reading the word sends a chill rippling down my back. The receptionist—still staring down the hallway—reaches up to scratch dry skin on her cheek. Her nails dislodge a rain of white particles that look like chalk dust. She keeps scratching, and the dust keeps falling as her cheek slowly erodes.

I turn away and start walking in the direction she’s staring.

The hallway is deserted for the most part. A staff member pushing a resident in a wheelchair approaches me and the two go past, neither seeming to see me. The resident—a frail old man whose skin is so liver-spotted he looks like a primate version of a Dalmatian—sits staring, mouth hanging open to reveal he has only a few teeth left jutting from his sore gums. The staff member is a grotesquely fat woman in her thirties with pasty-white skin like the flesh on the underside of a slug. She has the same vacant look in her eyes as the old man. Institutional lethargy on both their parts, or another gift of the Spindlekin? They did write that they’re here to visit everybody.

I walk past a lounge with nice furniture, a big-screen TV, a game table, and a small glass-enclosed aviary. There’s a gray cat curled up on a loveseat in front of the aviary. No doubt a favorite place for it to sit, watch the birds, and wonder how to get at them. The TV is on, but it displays nothing but distorted, abstract images that lurch spastically across the screen. The cat lies at an awkward angle, tongue lolling from the side of its mouth, eyes partially open to reveal slits of white. The birds lay on the aviary’s floor, all of them unmoving, save for a golden finch whose left leg twitches a couple times before becoming still. There’s a greasy handprint on the glass, a sign that might as well spell out
SPINDLEKIN WERE HERE
in large neon letters.

I walk past the lounge, feeling light-headed and dizzy. Everything feels so unreal, as I’m experiencing a waking dream, and yet none of it seems all that surprising to me, not really. I suppose my time with Liana has acclimated me to the strange, to the point where it almost seems normal.

Before long I come to the residents’ dining hall. It’s between breakfast and lunch, so the room’s empty, tables clean, chairs neatly arranged, ready for the next service. I almost walk past, but I hear coarse laughter coming from the kitchen. I recognize the sound, and I walk into the hall and head for the swinging door at the back of the room. I assume the door leads to the kitchen. I can hear them talking in that language of theirs, so I approach quietly and ease the door open a crack, just enough to allow me to peek inside. Two of the men—Mr. Mustache and Metal-Face—are spitting gobs of thick black sputum into a large pot of vegetable soup simmering on the stove. They pause between hawking up gunk to say something then laugh. I get the impression they’re having a competition to see who can spit the most disgusting goo into the soup, but I can’t be sure. Gray-Hair has pulled a chair over to an air vent in the corner. He’s standing on the chair, exhaling a noxious-looking greenish-brown stream of gas into the ventilation system. He doesn’t stop to inhale. He exhales continuously, as if he’s a machine pumping out gas instead of a man with limited lung capacity.

Entropy’s little helpers, hard at work.

I ease the kitchen door shut and leave the dining hall, fighting the urge to run. I wonder if I turn on the local news this evening, will I see a story about a mysterious illness that’s affected residents of Hithergreen Senior Center? Maybe even killed a number of them? It wouldn’t surprise me.

I make it back to my Protégé before the Spindlekin come out of the building, and I slouch down in my seat and hope they don’t spot me. All my macho fantasies of confronting them and demanding they leave Liana alone seem so foolish now. I don’t know what the hell these men are, but if they can rust metal and kill animals with a touch, I doubt they’ll feel threatened by me. If I get in their faces, all they’ll have to do is reach out, place a hand on my chest, and stop my heart. Game over.

This is the moment when I almost do it. Almost start my car, head for the highway, pick a direction at random and keep driving until I run out of gas. Not so much because I’m scared of the Spindlekin—though I am, no doubt—but because Liana is one of them. Or at least a being like them. What’s to say that she won’t turn on me one night? Maybe we’ll have an argument about something stupid, it doesn’t matter what. But she’ll be pissed, she’ll reach out and grab hold of me and work some kind of nasty mojo. Give me a stroke, maybe cause the flesh to melt off my bones. Or maybe she’ll do something worse, something I can’t imagine.

But I know I’m not going to take off, even though I probably should. Whatever Liana is, I love her. As bizarre and ridiculous as it may be, it’s true, and I’m not going to abandon her.

So when the Spindlekin pull out of Hithergreen’s parking lot, I follow.

* * *

They stop in a vacant lot with a lovely scenic view of Ash Creek’s waste treatment plant for lunch. I park on the street in front of a business name Off the Hookah, which sells—as the name implies—hookah pipes. It looks like some kind of drug paraphernalia store trying to fly just below the radar. Though the sign says open, no one goes in or out the entire time I’m parked there. I watch the Spindlekin through my camera, the viewfinder set to its highest magnification.

They open the van’s side door and bring out their supplies. The youngest sits cross-legged on the ground while the other two stand. They break out the booze and begin guzzling it down, one bottle after another. They also open the garbage bags they got from the vet’s, pull out a couple dead animals—a dog and a cat—pass them around and start tearing off chunks with their teeth. When they finish their repast, they gather the empty bottles and bones—which are picked clean—stuff them in the garbage bags, then light up cigarettes. They take their time smoking, talking while they do, looking for all the world like blue-collar workers taking a relaxing break before getting back to work. That is, if you don’t count the blood staining their gray work shirts.

The Spindlekin file back into the van and leave, and I continue tailing them. Despite the prodigious amount of alcohol he’s consumed, Gray-Hair controls the van without any problem. The Spindlekin’s next stop is at one of the busier intersections in town. There are competing gas stations on opposite corners, a pharmacy, and a bank. For reasons I’ve never quite understood, traffic is always heavy here, and it can get seriously backed up at rush hour. Maybe it has something to do with the timing of the lights. I don’t know. The Spindlekin pull into one of the gas stations and park. I pull into the bank parking lot on the other side of the streets and park out in the open. They’ll have a clear view of me if they look in my direction, but I want a good seat for their next show. I have a feeling it’s going to be a doozy.

They get out of the van and take up positions on three of the four street corners. Not the one closest to where I’m parked, though. I wonder if that’s a coincidence or if it’s because they know I’m here.

I expect them to do something. Place their hands on the crosswalk controls, maybe kneel down and touch the sidewalk, maybe even dig their fingers into the cement as if their hands are drills. But all they do is stand on their chosen corners and watch the traffic go by. A few minutes pass, and a light sprinkling of rain starts to fall. I periodically hit the wipers to keep my windshield clear. I don’t want anything to interfere with my view.

My windows are up, but I can still hear the faint sound of an emergency vehicle’s siren blaring off in the distance and rapidly coming closer. I don’t know what the Spindlekin have planned, but a cold queasiness takes up residence in my stomach and I find myself getting out of my car. I walk to the corner, barely registering the sensation of rain on my skin, feeling like a passenger in my own body. The wailing siren is coming closer, and I know something very bad is about to happen. I want to stop it. More than that, I
need
to. This need is so powerful, so overwhelming, that it paralyzes me. Do I run out in the street and try to stop traffic? Do I choose one of the Spindlekin, dash over to his corner, grab hold of him and demand that he stop whatever’s about to happen?

But I don’t do anything, though, because time’s up.

The EMS van approaches the intersection from the north, lights flashing, siren blaring. Every car in the vicinity remains motionless as the paramedics speed toward whatever emergency has summoned then. Then all three Spindlekin motion with the right hands. Nothing dramatic, just a slight movement, but a blue Civic sitting at the intersection rolls forward. Maybe the driver’s foot moves of its own accord, slips off the brake and falls onto the gas. However it happens, the Civic pulls halfway into the intersection just as the paramedics come flying through. The car rolls right in the path of the EMS van, and although the paramedics slam on their brakes, there’s nothing they can do to avoid broadsiding the Civic.

From my vantage point, I can see the driver of the Civic—a blond-haired woman in her late twenties or early thirties. I expect her to gaze at the oncoming vehicle with wide-eyed horror, but she doesn’t. Instead she turns around to look at the rear seat, and I realize she has a child back there, a toddler or maybe an infant. I’m a parent; I understand the instinctive need to try to protect your child, even if there’s nothing you can do.

You hear people talk about accidents seeming to happen in slow motion, time slowing down so that seconds become minutes, and minutes an eternity. But that doesn’t happen here. If anything, time seems to speed up. The paramedics hit the Civic, metal crumples, glass shatters, tires squeal, the vehicles spin halfway around, and finally come to a stop nearest the corner of the intersection where I’m standing. The siren of the EMS van is dead, although its lights keep flashing. I don’t want to look at the Civic, don’t want to see what’s happened to the woman and her child, but I can’t stop myself. It doesn’t matter, though. The car’s airbag has activated and is thankfully blocking my view. I feel an urge to run out and try to help, despite my complete lack of medical training. I don’t even know basic first aid.

People are getting out of their cars now, shocked expressions on their faces. Some of them whip out cell phones to call 911, while others just stand and stare at the wrecked vehicles, wanting to help but unsure how. And a few have a dark gleam in their eyes, and I know they’re getting off on being so close to the action, maybe hoping to get even closer and catch sight of some blood. For a moment I wish I hadn’t left my camera in the car. How often do you get a chance to take pictures of a scene like this? But the thought shames and sickens me, and I cast it aside. One of the paramedics comes out the passenger side of her wrecked vehicle. She has long black hair braided into a pony-tail and a wicked gash on her forehead that’s bleeding profusely, no doubt much to the delight of some in the crowd. The driver of the EMS van doesn’t get out, which I take as a bad sign. The woman hurries to the Civic’s driver’s side and tries to open the door, but it stays shut. I can hear a baby crying in the back seat. I wonder if it’s injured or just badly shook up. I hope for the latter.